


Intricate Machinery

by akaparalian



Series: Roy/Ed Week 2016 [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Domestic, Fuhrer Roy Mustang, M/M, Married Life, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 11:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7572895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Edward Elric never really thought he would be this old or this married. Or: "It's hard work, being married to the Fuhrer, but someone's got to do it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intricate Machinery

**Author's Note:**

> First of seven (knock on wood) short fics for Roy/Ed week 2016! Or, as I like to call it, my slow and unerring backslide return to Roy/Ed hell.
> 
> For July 25th, the first day of the challenge, I chose the prompt "intricate machinery." Sorry/not sorry for taking a prompt that cool and turning it into... basically curtainfic. ( ~~Curtainfic is cool, though.~~ ) I have everything I'm writing this week planned out, and I feel kind of guilty for the bait-and-switch this fic sets up, actually. Be, uh... be warned that they're not all going to be this gentle. I did definitely enjoy writing this, though. It felt a little bit like slowly writing out a warm hug, if that makes any sense.
> 
> At any rate, I hope you enjoy! I've linked to this fic on my [Tumblr](http://akaparalian.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](http://twitter.com/akaparalian), so if you enjoyed it, come find me there!

It’s hard work, being married to the Fuhrer, but someone’s got to do it. 

Roy is always up before he is, but then Ed’s always been fond of his sleep. Most of the time, he wakes up at seven to the sound of the shower thrumming in the other room. Depending on his mood, and whether or not Roy has an early meeting that day, he either rolls over to go back to sleep, shuffles downstairs for the morning paper, or slips into the bathroom to join him. Obviously the third type is preferable, but they don’t always have time for that.

That’s fine. By the time Roy’s buzzing through the kitchen and out the door on his way to the car that’s waiting to take him to Central Command, Ed’s downstairs one way or another, usually manning the coffee machine. Roy’s tenure in the military has left him more than capable of stomaching it black, and usually pretty shitty and way, way too strong, but Edward has come to discover he has a little bit of a taste for the finer things in life, at least when they’re going in his mouth (heh. Roy knows that only too well). So they keep a good stock of the fancy dark roast Ed fell in love with on his last trip to Xing, and Ed’s responsible for brewing it, and that way everyone’s happy.

They always, always kiss goodbye in the mornings. It’s stupid and sappy but damn it, even all these years later Ed still hates letting the bastard out of his sight. There’s no way he’s _ever_ letting him leave without a proper send-off. 

Once Roy’s out the door, Ed retreats to the library. One of the benefits of being a real-ass adult with a real-ass house and also, you know, being married to the most powerful man in Amestris is that Ed now has a library _in his house_ that rivals some of the ones he’d explored with Al back in the day. His collection of first-edition alchemical, historical, and naturalist texts is, frankly, unreasonably large and anal-retentively well organized, if only because Roy uses it, too. Of course, he still has to get things from _actual_ libraries from time to time, but more often than not these days he finds he has what he needs. Roy laughs at him, sometimes, for being predictable, but he also doesn’t exactly _complain_ about the fact that he hasn’t had to get more creative with gift-giving than “a stack of dusty old books” in the past five years unless he actually wants to.

Granted, the handcrafted ring on Ed’s finger is proof enough that more often than not he _does_ actually want to, but still.

\---

WIthout fail, Ed stays cooped up in the library until his rumbling stomach drives him out. There’s something almost embarrassingly delightful about the way the room lights up and warms as the sun slowly creeps higher in the sky; from time to time Ed will look up from whatever he’s reading or writing and the view out the window to the gardens will take his breath away, even now. He keeps his desk under that window for exactly that reason, after all.

But eventually, he _does_ get hungry, and he’ll make his way downstairs. They don’t keep a cook, or anything; they have a housekeeper, but she only comes by once a week, just to keep things presentable enough for the sort of high-calibre guests who come part and parcel with running a country. Roy took a lot of the luxury out of being Fuhrer, is the thing. He’s democratically elected, which means he answers a little more to how he spends the taxpayers’ money, but it’s more than that; he may have been in command for a long, long time, and he may like good food and he may have very expensive sartorial tastes, and Ed may be with him on the food and more than willing to support the suits, too, if only because they make his ass look _divine_ , but… Roy’s no king. And he’s certainly not King Bradley. And Ed grew up in Resembool, for God’s sake. Neither one of them exactly feels like they need a _butler_.

Anyway. Point being, Ed rouses himself by lunchtime, mostly. Certainly there are still days -- or even weeks in a stretch, sometimes -- where he burrows himself down deep into whatever he’s reading or researching and has to be physically removed; he may be older now, and even a little wiser, but he’s still the same person, after all. But most of the time, food takes precedent, at least for as long as it takes him to pad back downstairs to the kitchen and make himself a sandwich.

If he’s feeling like he needs a change of pace, or he’s just not that enthused by whatever he’s reading, there are a couple of good cafes within walking distance. They live in a nicer part of town, obviously -- not in the old mansion, which Roy had promptly donated to Central University to have them convert it into student housing, but in a very nice neighborhood nonetheless -- so it’s not like there are muggers on every street corner, but even so, Ed had to fight pretty hard to convince the powers that be that he could do just fine without a security detail or any sort of escort, thanks. The powers that be, in this case, turned out not to be Roy, though even he had some initial concerns about Ed’s safety. Things were obviously a lot more… tumultuous, there at first. And being the Fuhrer’s famous former-state alchemist husband wasn’t exactly a low-profile, risk-free proposition to begin with; the homunculi were never the _only_ threat to Amestris, after all, nor even the only one within its borders. Not to mention that Ed had accumulated plenty of enemies of his own over the years, too.

Actually, that was part of how he had convinced them. Turns out “remember how I can kick large quantities of ass and joined the military when I was still certifiably a child?” is a pretty good argument for being allowed to walk down the street for a cup of coffee and a scone without a nanny.

The one cafe is shiny and chrome, with sleek, tasteful decorations and the most mind-boggling and delicious tea selection Ed has ever laid eyes on. The other is a little more rustic, in only the most charming possible way, with lots of warm, brightly polished wood, and there’s just something about their pastries that makes Ed _swoon_. He’s proposed to the pastry chef multiple times, actually, including several times with Roy sitting right next to him, rolling his eyes fondly.

The staffs at both places have long since gotten used to having Edward Elric, hero of the people and one half of the first family, drop in. It was a big to-do, when he and Roy first moved in -- just after the election, with all the associated hubbub, and far too much bowing and scraping for Ed’s comfort. Things have gotten a lot better now that he’s gotten everyone to start calling him by his first name -- though Roy, of course, is still “Fuhrer Mustang” whenever _he_ drops by.

Depending on his workload and his present levels of hunger, wistfulness, and/or desire for human contact, he might spend a good portion of the afternoon lounging around people-watching and ordering regular refills, especially if he had the forethought to bring a book with him. This being a richer part of Central and all, the other patrons aren’t exactly the types of folks Ed grew up rubbing elbows with, but, of course, he’s long since learned to navigate high society, no matter how much he might hate it. Roy seems to take vindictive pleasure in making him dress up and dragging him out to fancy events and fundraisers and what-have-you, though Ed has a never-quite-confirmed sneaking suspicion that that’s just because Roy himself hates those things and appreciates having someone else there to commiserate with.

No one tends to ask him too many questions if he _does_ decide to just sit in a cafe and do next to nothing for hours on end. At his most base level, Ed’s still far too restless to do that most of the time, but every now and then there are days when he stubbornly decides he’s earned it, and stays sedentary, enjoying the gentle wash of music and quiet chatter and the occaisional glimpse of something interesting going on around him until the sun starts to set.

Other days, he either never leaves the house at all or beats a hasty retreat from the public perils of the outdoors as soon as he’s bolted down some form of food and drink, but either way, Roy doesn’t get home before six at the absolute earliest. Often, of course, it’s much later than that, but Ed always tries to at very least be back in the house by that time, no matter what he’s been doing the rest of the day; their schedules are busy enough that they get little enough time together. He doesn’t exactly want to waste any of what they do have.

Because, of course, Ed doesn’t just laze about reading and eating and having a grand old time _all_ the time. He had had more than enough of that about three days into civilian life; whatever gripes he may have had about the military, they sure as hell knew how to keep him busy. So did saving lives, it turned out. Not that he was wishing for another group of lunatics hell-bent on destroying the entire country, but, well. Some middle ground between that and a life of complete inactivity wouldn’t hurt.

So he turned to the thing that had been the largest driving force in his life thus far: alchemy. Roy laughs, sometimes, at the way losing the ability to actually do alchemy hardly seems to deter him from his fascination. The thing is, ‘expert alchemical consultant’ -- even one who can’t actually transmute anymore -- is a position in high enough demand throughout Central, let alone the rest of the country and even the rest of the _world_ , that Ed keeps himself more than busy. 

Sometimes he wonders if it isn’t _worse_ to keep himself half-in and half-out of alchemy like this -- close enough to do good work with the immense knowledge bank he’s acquired over the course of his rather unusual life, but not close enough to _touch_ it, to actually pull from that raw, wild power himself. But, well. It’s what he knows. It’s what he’s always known. In some ways, it’s his birthright. Leaving it alone just… didn’t work for him. He tried, but part of his newly-minted adult wisdom is knowing when an attempt is going to be fruitless no matter how much effort he puts in, and going with the flow when he needs to. Alchemy is like that.

It helps, too, that it’s not a bad gig by any stretch of the imagination. It pays well, not that that’s really an issue, and freelancing means he gets to pick and choose what he actually _does_. He travels as much as he wants to -- mostly when Roy is going somewhere, or when he really misses Winry and Rush Valley, or else Granny and Resembool -- and does the work that interests him, or that really needs doing. Roy was very clear, when all this started, that Edward had long since fulfilled a lifetime’s worth of duty and responsibility to the world as a whole, and there was absolutely no need for him to work unless he _really_ wanted to, but, well, he _does_ want to. He _likes_ the work, and he does feel better not being a freeloader.

Days when he works are a lot less structured, because everything from travel time to time and effort spent doing research varies wildly from job to job. But even when he’s working the most convoluted and frustrating jobs -- _especially_ then, really, since those tend to be the days when he needs the most time to wind down and destress, and over the years Roy’s become uniquely talented at both winding Ed up and cooling him down -- he makes sure he’s home by six.

Roy’s days go a little differently.

The problem is, no two are the same, ever. In so very, very many ways, he would like to go back and tell his twenty-nine-year-old self that being a Colonel is _easy_. Not that he’d ever expected that being Fuhrer would be a cushy desk job -- he’s _much_ too smart for that, thank you -- but it’s truly a beast of its own nature.

Even back in the old days, the Fuhrer had more than just military responsibiltes, and then of course Roy had the bright idea to make the job even _more_ complicated as soon as it was finally within his grasp. The sheer breadth of the workforce that reports to him is staggering, and the number of different tasks they undertake on any given day for the benefit of the Amestrian people boggles the mind. Not to _mention_ that dealing with an elected legislature turns out to be a process seemingly designed for the sole purpose of graying every hair on his head. His personal record for asking Hawkeye if it’s not too late to reconsider all of this is nine times in one week.

Still, it’s not all bad. The sense of duty and awe never really does go away; it’s been with him since he was given his first command, but it’s different now. Deeper. With more tooth to it, to. Every single thing he does has the potential to impact someone’s entire life, for better or for worse. That’s a frightening notion, but it’s heady, too.

And the added bonus is, there was no one who could _actually_ tell him no when he decided he wanted to marry his former subordinate. No one but Edward, that is, but “no” had been the farthest thing from Ed’s mind.

It’s not uncommon for Roy to find himself dragged to dozens of meetings over the course of a single day, the stream of paperwork and policy seems to flow on and on with no end in sight, and neither peace nor war seems the solution to the pounding headache that dogs him every time he even begins to think about the myriad lands beyond their borders. But on the other hand, he’s done more good in this public life than he did in well over a decade in the military. And crushing schedule or not, there are relatively few occaisions when he doesn’t have the authority to say, “That’s enough for today. There’s someone waiting for me at home.”

And the beautiful thing about that is, there _is_.

\---

 

 

They almost never eat out, and when they do, it’s usually a big affair. Ed can get away with no guards, but Roy, despite being, no matter the jibes Ed might have thrown at him in his youth, easily his equal in a fight, has a security detail with him everywhere he goes. They at least stay outside and guard the exits while he’s at home, but they’re enough to put a real damper on spontaneous plans to go out for a bite to eat. So instead, they do a lot of entertaining -- if ensuring that Alphonse gets at least semi-regular meals counts as entertaining, that is.

Ed sees it as among his most solemn duties to make sure his brother doesn’t starve to death in pursuit of his degree. Education is great and all -- Edward is obviously a staunch believer in the weight and power of knowledge -- but Al can get scarily focused on his studying sometimes. Ed can’t _imagine_ where he got that from. He comes around several times a week, and Ed tuts at the fact that he’s _definitely_ lost weight since the last time and he’ll be no good to anyone if he starves to death before he can even graduate, and Al sits there and takes it with the patience of a saint and then eats them out of house and home, and Roy rolls his eyes fondly and oversees the whole thing.

Al and Ed have this terrible habit of retreating to the library after dinner and swapping notes for hours, Roy trailing a few feet behind them at all times, usually with either paperwork or research of his own in hand. They stay cooped up in there together, the three of them, while the street lights flicker on outside in the summer, or with snow slowly piling up on the windowsill in the winter, until one of three things happens. First, and least awkwardly for all involved, Al might decide of his own accord that it’s high time he gets back to his own apartment, so that he gets a good night’s rest and is well-prepared for lecture the next day. Secondly, and bearably, Roy might glance up at the clock and realize it’s getting late, and make some thinly-veiled but socially acceptable comments about getting Ed to bed so they have enough time to _enjoy one another’s company_ for a while before sleeping. Or, thirdly, and best avoided at all costs, _Ed_ might realize it’s getting late, and make some not-veiled-at-all comments about fucking Roy into the mattress. The only upside to the last option is that it never fails to make Alphonse blush, which is a pretty entertaining sight to behold.

Not all of their guests’ visits end quite so dramatically; Riza and Jean, for example, usually come over at least a couple of times a month, even on top of all that Roy sees them for work. The rest of their old allies stop by on occasion, too; they’d honestly love to have Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong come around more often, but he has the _worst_ habit of breaking their furniture. Winry, whenever she makes it in from Rush Valley. Whoever it is, though -- even when it’s Alphonse -- they generally don’t stay too late.

The tireder he gets, the more Ed seems drawn to Roy, like there’s some sort of gravitational force at work. He’s been known to end up slumped full-body across Roy’s lap _in public_ , let alone in the comfort of their own home. It’s not exactly hard to convince him to go to bed as soon as they’re alone.

Some nights they have sex, some nights they don’t. Some nights, they just sit there in the quiet together, slolwy wrapping up whatever they’ve spent the evening working on and simply basking in one another’s presence. Some nights they run the risk of breaking the headboard “for the _third time this year_ , Edward, honestly, a little caution wouldn’t go awry --” 

No mattter what, the thing is -- the important thing has _always_ been -- they’re together. Edward Elric is possibly the world’s most comical big spoon, and he likes it that way. Roy just appreciates the way he’s a bona fide space heater. Day in and day out, they fall asleep tangled up together, until the lines blur and it’s not quite possible to tell which limbs belong to who. Together. In this, if not in all things or as often as they’d like, together. They slip from one day to the next, and the only thing that remains constant with each new dawn is that they face it together.

They’d never want it any other way.


End file.
